This experience is not unique, and even the ancients remarked that people who were struck crumbled to dust.
Here is a similar case, no less curious—
On June 13, 1893, at Rodez, a shepherd named Desmazes, seeing that a storm was threatening, collected his beasts and drove them quickly towards the farm. When he was just there, he was struck by lightning. His body, which was completely incinerated, preserved a natural appearance.
It is by this complete incineration and the probable volatilization of the cinders that certain authors explain the sudden disappearance of some of those who have been struck.
Legend attributes the mysterious death of Romulus to a similar cause. According to Livy, the illustrious founder of Rome was reviewing his army in a plain near the marsh of Capra. Suddenly a storm accompanied by violent claps of thunder enveloped the king in a cloud so thick that it hid him from sight. From that moment Romulus was seen no more on earth.
It is true, Livy adds, that some of the witnesses suspected the senators of having torn him to pieces: kings have sometimes been subject to all kinds of surprises on the part of their "courtiers."
In most cases the electric matter produces burns more or less severe. These, when they do not attack the whole organism as in the preceding examples, are localized to certain parts of the body. Sometimes they are quite superficial and only attack the epidermis. Often without absolute carbonization, they penetrate deep into the flesh and cause death after the most fearful suffering.
Here are some examples of different sorts of burns—
In 1865, in the Rue Pigalle in Paris, a man had his eyes burnt by lightning.
A young soldier of the 27th Battalion of Chasseurs was armed, mounting guard at the Col de Soda. It was in the month of July, 1900. Suddenly he was surrounded by the dazzling glare of lightning, which was almost immediately succeeded by an awful explosion of thunder. The sentinel, leaving his arms, fell backwards screaming. People ran to him, and saw that the fluid, attracted by the point of the bayonet, had struck it, and, gliding down, the metal had burnt his feet rather severely.